


On One Condition

by prepare4trouble



Category: Red Dwarf (UK TV)
Genre: Broken Bones, Gen, Head Injury, Minor Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:22:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24879157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prepare4trouble/pseuds/prepare4trouble
Summary: Lister tries to recuperate after an injury, while Rimmer tries to correctly allocate the blame
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	On One Condition

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a dialogue prompts meme on Tumblr. Prompt was "You could have died."

“You could have died, you know,” Rimmer said. He paced the room, back and forth, glancing at Lister nervously from time to time, as though checking that he was still there. “What the smeg were you thinking?

Lister lay in the bottom bunk. The chances of him being able to get himself into the top one in his current state were slim to none. Everything hurt, from the tips of his toes to the top of his head. Even his hair hurt. Was that possible? He hadn’t thought so, but apparently it was.

“That wasn’t a rhetorical question, Lister,” Rimmer told him. “I really want to know what exactly was going through your mind when you decided to leap off that cliff like some kind of suicidal lemming? You could have _died_! If it wasn’t for an incredible stroke of luck, you would be dead right now, and I’d be having this conversation with a corpse. Or a hologram. How would you like that, hmm? We only have one hard light light bee you know.”

Lister rolled his eyes, and then wished that he hadn’t. That hurt too. In addition to the broken leg, he had a concussion that was making the room spin, plus bruised ribs and general bruising and muscle aches all over his body from the impact. All in all, he was very much _not_ in the mood for this.

“I’d have loved that, actually,” Rimmer continued. “If you ended up a hologram. It’d serve you right. By the way, when did you last get a holoscan? You should go get another one as soon as you’re healed up. If you do die, it wouldn’t be any fun to gloat about it to someone who doesn’t remember this conversation.”

Lister closed his eyes. If Rimmer would just stop talking, he could get some sleep. He was sure that if he could just get some sleep, he would feel better.

“Go on then,” Rimmer told him. “Tell me what you were thinking.”

Lister licked his lips. “Rimmer, can we do this another time?”

“No. No we can’t. I just want to point out that you absolutely would _not_ enjoy being dead, Lister.”

With his eyes still closed, Lister sighed. “I didn’t ‘leap off the cliff’, I fell.”

“You’re forgetting, I was there, Lister. I _saw_ you leap off the cliff.”

“Yeah,” Lister agreed, “But I didn’t mean to. I forgot the gravity was a bit lower on that planet. Once you’ve jumped, you just kinda… keep going. I saw you slip, and I was trying to save you.” He shrugged, and instantly regretted it, winced in pain, and regretted that too. “I did save you,” he added. If I hadn’t grabbed your shoulder as I went past, _you_ ’d have fallen instead.”

Rimmer frowned. “Nonsense. I didn’t slip. Not until you grabbed hold of me as you went flying past behind me. If I hadn’t shrugged you off, you’d have taken me over the edge with you.”

“You tripped, Rimmer,” Lister told him. He had seen it, he had seen Rimmer trip and stumble toward the cliff edge, and he had stopped him from falling.

When Rimmer didn’t answer immediately. Lister cracked open one eye to see him frowning as he considered what Lister was telling him. After a moment, he shook his head. “No,” he said. “You’re making it up to save face. Even if I _had_ tripped, and I’m not saying I did, but even if I had, it’s not like it would have injured me, is it? I would have been fine. You, on the other hand, will be in a cast for months. So why would you have taken a risk like that?”

Lister sighed. “I didn’t have that much time to think about it, you know,” he said. “I didn’t have chance to weigh up the pros and cons. I saw someone trip, I tried to stop them going over the edge of a cliff. The fact that it was you didn’t really register til after I hit the ground.”

“Well, more fool you then,” Rimmer told him. “Don’t think I’m going to feel like I owe you for this. Don’t think I’m going to go around passing you things so you don’t need to hobble across the room. Don’t think I’m going to let you keep the bottom bunk for any longer than is strictly necessary. Don’t think…”  
  
“I get it, Rimmer,” Lister told him.

Of course, if Rimmer _had_ fallen, he probably wouldn’t have been able to switch himself to soft light before he hit the floor, so the impact would have been painful, and honestly, Lister thought it might be worth a broken leg and a concussion not to have to hear him whine about the fact that nobody stopped him falling.

He supposed he was lucky he only broke one leg. It could have been a lot worse, but he knew from experience that hobbling around the ship on crutches was going to be inconvenient and uncomfortable.

“I just want to make it clear that I do _not_ owe you for your act of stupidity,” Rimmer said.

Lister closed his eyes again. “Fine.”

“In fact, given the concession I’ve already made to you by giving up my bunk, there’s actually an argument to be made that _you_ owe _me_.”

Rimmer logic. Lister supposed he should be used to it by now, but the pain in his head was making it difficult to follow.

“But I tell you what,” Rimmer told him. “I’ll call it even on one condition.”

“Can you smeg off, Rimmer?”

“In a minute,” Rimmer promised him. “We’re even on the condition that I get to sign your cast.”

Lister frowned, eyes still closed. “Seriously?”

“Yes seriously. The last time you broke a limb I didn’t get to do it because I was soft light. Now, I can. You know, when I was at school, if ever any any of the other kids broke an arm or a leg, all the others would write messages and draw pictures on the cast, and it looked like so much fun. They never let me do it. And what’s worse is I always figured if I ever broke my own arm or leg, at least I’d get to do it then, but I never did. Not one broken limb my entire school career. It was so incredibly unfair.”

The painkillers were starting to wear off, and his leg was beginning to throb harder. “You’re upset you never broke a leg?”

“Or an arm. Of course, knowing my luck, if I _had_ broken an arm, it would have been my dominant one and I wouldn’t have been able to write anything legible anyway. So, what do you say? Can I do it?”

Lister sighed. He couldn’t help thinking this whole conversation had been some elaborate set-up to get him to agree to Rimmer writing something on his cast. Something he would probably have agreed to anyway, without the coercion. “Fine,” he said.

Rimmer grinned widely. “Excellent,” he said. “Okay, sleep tight, Listy. I’m going to go and get a pen.”

As Lister closed his eyes, a thought occurred. Rimmer was far too gleeful about this, and he hadn’t once mentioned what he might be planning on writing, or drawing.

As he drifted off to sleep, Lister’s final thought was that he might have made a terrible mistake…


End file.
